


A Friendship (of Sorts)

by the_magnificently_angry_beaver



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-05 07:24:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_magnificently_angry_beaver/pseuds/the_magnificently_angry_beaver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because Peeta wasn't the only one Katniss needed to heal after the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Friendship (of Sorts)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [forthegenuine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthegenuine/gifts).



> For forthegenuine.

The newborn in the photograph is dark-eyed, dark-haired, and really doesn’t look anything like his father.

The handwriting on the back of the picture is barely legible, but when I squint at it for a minute I can finally discern _Finn Odair_ from the messy scrawl.

_Oh_.

I hadn’t even known that Annie was pregnant; between my killing Coin and my trial and my return to District Twelve, I guess some things escaped my notice. I don’t even think I’ve ever seen what Annie’s handwriting looked like, come to think of it.

Peeta stands at the wall, punching in a number, with the phone cocked between his shoulder and his ear. His smile is already wide, but somehow manages to grow wider when the person on the other end picks up. “Hello? Annie? Hi! It’s Peeta.” A pause. “Yeah, we got the picture.” Another pause. “Yes, he’s beautiful.”

Figures that he’d call. On his good days, it can be hard to remember Peeta was anything but the friendly, smiling baker’s son he was before captivity. It can be hard to remember the horrible things he said to me, the way he wrapped his hands around my neck, choking me, trying to kill me.

Hard to remember when he’s doing something he’d normally do.

He’s talking to Annie like the last time he talked to her was yesterday, rather than months ago. “How old?” he asks. “He depriving you of sleep?” A nod. “No more than usual? Yeah, I understand. Is he sleeping now?” He nods again, although faster than before. He nods through whatever Annie’s saying, his head moving fast enough to communicate to me her enthusiasm.

Peeta looks my way and waves me over with his hand. “Yeah, she’s here. Do you want to talk to her?” I shake my head—after everything, I don’t think she should want to talk to me and anyway, what would I say to her?

The receiver is in my hand and at my ear before I can say no. It’s silent on either end for a moment. “Hello?” I hear.

“Hello?” I reply. “Annie?”

“Katniss! Hi!”

The conversation that follows is one that I can’t really keep up with. Maybe it’s because I never wanted kids, but I know nothing about anything Annie is talking about. I was always under the impression that babies just needed to be fed and cried and slept a lot. Mostly I nod and agree with whatever she’s saying. It isn’t until there’s a lull on her end that I realize I should probably say something more substantial.

“He looks like you,” I say. It’s the first thing to come to mind.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Peeta attempting to grab the phone from my hand. “You can’t just say something like that!” he whispers.

“He does, doesn’t he?” Annie asks on the other end of the line.

Before I can agree, Peeta rips the phone away. “Annie? Yeah. That’s great! Oh. Yeah, I’ll let you go. Take care!”

 

* * *

 

Doctor Aurelius thinks it’s a good idea for me to continue talking to Annie on the phone—not as a formal part of my therapy, but whenever I have a minute or want to. At first I think this has something to do with my mother, who is in District Four herself, but in the few weeks that follow, during our own phone sessions, Annie and my mother never come up in relation to one another.

I’m not sure why I keep talking to Annie. At first, conversation with her is always more difficult than it usually is with other people; I never really know what to say but I _do_ know that apologizing for my part in her husband’s death is probably off the table. When I finally sit down and think about it, I realize what the problem really is.

I know next to nothing about Annie.

All I knew about her is that she was married to Finnick and that she is—by all accounts—crazy and has been since her Games.

I tell this to Dr. Aurelius during therapy one day, and his response to me is, “Well, that gives you somewhere to start.”

_What?_

“Get to know other things about her. You’ll find something to talk about.”

I don’t believe him. “Why do you care?”

He sighs on the other end of the line. “Katniss, don’t you think everyone deserves a friend?”

I do. And I’m sure that Annie has more than me. Regardless, I find myself making calls to District Four when I have a minute (I never really want to), and gradually I find myself finding out other things about Annie; that her father and brothers are fishermen, for example, or that she doesn’t know how to cook.

I find out that her family—her family is for the most part intact, I learn, with the exception of a very large Finnick-shaped hole—has been helping her out this whole time. When I ask after Johanna, she says that she thinks she’s in her home District.

“Johanna wouldn’t come here,” Annie tells me, and I can hear Finn making baby noises in the background. “Not after what they did to her. Water scares her too much now.”

At best, our calls are abrupt. We have too little in common—and at the same time _too much_ in common—to carry a conversation. We avoid our similarities because they hurt too much, although I don’t know if I’m more afraid of who will be hurt more by things remembered—me or Annie.

It’s gradual, but you could say that it’s a friendship of sorts. Or on its way to being one.

 

* * *

 

I’m not exactly what people would call friendly. I know this; I know that I’m difficult and that I’m hard to read and that I’m still healing. I know that even if I wasn’t recovering from everything that’s happened these last couple of years, I would still be abrasive, because that’s all I’ve been since I was eleven.

I know that I’m not exactly what someone looks for in a friend.

Annie isn’t, either.

Considering these facts, it’s not all that surprising that whatever relationship we have is not easy to maintain. There are days when I call Annie merely because it’s out of routine—I have nothing to say. There are days when Annie is barely coherent—and she’ll have been fine just a few days before. There are days when I have nothing to say _and_ Annie is barely coherent. There are days when I don’t feel like calling. And then there are days when Annie doesn’t pick up.

I’m grumbling to Peeta over dinner one night about this. It was a hard day for me because Annie wasn’t all _there_ when I called. I could hear Finn screaming somewhere in the house, but Annie didn’t make any move to hang up the phone and take care of him. She sat (I think she sat) on the other end of the line, humming a song into the receiver. I talked for a few minutes, waiting for her to respond in any way or to say “Katniss, the baby—I’ve got to go.”

She did none of that, so after a few minutes I said, “Alright, sounds like things are busy on your end. I’ll let you go now. Bye,” and hung up.

Peeta’s been good recently—no flashbacks for a few days, at least. Not that I’ve seen, anyway. He nods at me as I talk around the biscuit I’m shoving into my mouth. “It’s just hard,” I say. “Because sometimes she gives me nothing and I’m trying, Peeta. And sometimes it feels like I’m the only one who’s trying.”

He sighs and reaches across the table to pat my hand. “Sometimes being friends with someone _is_ hard.”

I snort. “Not for you.”

He laughs, and it’s in earnest. “I don’t think so. I’ve had plenty difficulty with making friends.”

“Give me one example,” I tell him as I stand up from the table and move to the sink. It’s a challenge, and he’ll recognize it as such. Making friends is a secret talent of his; he may have wanted for a few things in his life, but a friend was never one of them.

“Easy,” he replies. “Junni Leffer. When we were fourteen, she saw a picture I’d drawn in my notebook and after that, wouldn’t stop asking me to do a portrait of her.”

“So?”

“It was annoying and made it hard to be around her.”

“Did you ever draw a picture of her?”

“Yes, and after that she and I went back to being friends like she never knew I had artistic talent.”

I put the stopper in the drain and let the sink fill up with hot water. “You just… gave in? And eventually it was like you were never annoyed with her to begin with?”

Leaning against the counter, he ignores my question. “I have another example. Once there was a girl who I really liked, and I thought for a while that she liked me too. And then I found out that she was doing it to ensure our mutual survival.”

I smile despite myself—sometimes we talk to each other about our Games, sometimes it hurts less and we can make a small joke. “You lived.”

“I did,” he says. “But it didn’t make being around her any easier after that.”

“What changed that for you? What made it easier?”

Sighing, Peeta throws an arm around my shoulders and pulls me in. “Keep trying, Katniss,” he says, pressing his lips to my temple.

 

* * *

 

The day after things have _changed_ between me and Peeta, I wake up alone. If we hadn’t regularly been sleeping in the same bed by now, waking up to the other side of the bed already cold might have made me panic. Baker’s hours. Peeta doesn’t follow the same clock as me.

I continue to lay there, the sheets pooling around my waist, my breasts pressing into the mattress. For all that I had heard growing up in the Seam, I don’t feel any different. I had thought I might. I suppose the soreness between my legs can’t be ignored.

What I also can’t ignore are the memories that wash over me—the bed creaking under me; Peeta moving over me, although that can’t have been for very long; his mouth on my neck and breasts and lips; the feel of his foreskin in my hand, moving over his shaft. His breath warm on my ear and the _Oh shit_ he whispered before pulling out of me. His release hot and wet on my stomach. His mouth turned up in a smile against my own, the t-shirt he’d used to clean up his semen.

_You love me, real or not real?_

Suddenly I’m up and on my way downstairs, my footfalls needlessly quiet.

The receiver is heavy as I cock it between my head and shoulder. The number I dial is committed to muscle memory, as my finger flies across the keypad before my mind can catch up to what I’m doing.

“Hello?” the voice on the other end is tired. Maybe I shouldn’t have called—it’s probably too early to call anybody.

“Annie?”

“Katniss? What are you doing calling so early?”

I pause. “I slept with him. With Peeta.”

As I say it, I realize how ridiculous I must sound—how ridiculous I must look. I’m on the phone talking to someone on the other side of Panem, and I am still naked.

“Haven’t you been doing that?”

“Well, yes. But I mean—we had sex.”

“Oh.” Silence. “And?”

“I told him I love him.”

I think I can feel her smiling on the other end, even though she says nothing.

“So that’s why I called you.”

“You love him?”

I pause. I know I said it to Peeta last night, and I know I told her that I said it just a minute ago, but for some reason affirming it now seems… invasive on my part. Should this be between me and Peeta? Will telling people make it less true? Before, after our Games, whatever we may have had just seemed tainted by how much everyone wanted us to flaunt it. How many times did we kiss for the cameras? How many of those kisses were real?

Annie seems to sense my hesitation. “It’s okay to let other people know that you love each other, Katniss.”

“It is?”

“Yes.” She pauses. “Sometimes it’s hard to talk about, but Finnick and I would have loved to be able to let other people know we were in love. But we couldn’t, and you know why.” I do know why. “You and Peeta don’t have to worry about that. Nobody has to worry about that, not anymore.”

We’re free to love each other. Comfort wraps itself around me like a warm blanket and settles in me like a full belly. I smile. “Then yes. Yes, I love him.”

“Good.”

We continue to talk after that; I tell her what we’ll probably have for dinner, and she tells me that Finn is able to stand now if he pulls himself up with the furniture. I tell her how—slowly—the District is being rebuilt and that it feels like something new is complete every week. She tells me about the new hospital in District Four and the difference it’s making already. I need to get dressed, and I tell her so. After she laughs her fill at the idea of me talking to her on the phone, naked, for over an hour, she lets me go. Before we hang up, I pause.

“Annie?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "Katniss and Annie friendship fic set during Mockingjay or post-Mockingjay."
> 
> Thank you for the prompt. It was a bear to write, but I had a lot of fun and enjoyed the challenge of thinking how those two could possibly be friends! 
> 
> Thank you to angylinni and her helpers for all their effort in organizing this exchange!


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